Dezeen » Carsten Höllerhttp://www.dezeen.com
architecture and design magazineTue, 03 Mar 2015 22:00:26 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Carsten Höller builds a tower with a slide at the Vitra campushttp://www.dezeen.com/2014/06/20/carsten-holler-builds-a-tower-with-a-slide-to-the-vitra-campus/
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/06/20/carsten-holler-builds-a-tower-with-a-slide-to-the-vitra-campus/#commentsFri, 20 Jun 2014 09:17:06 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=481126Artist Carsten Höller has erected a cross between a viewing tower and a helter skelter at the Vitra Campus at Weil am Rhein in Germany (+ slideshow). Part artwork and part architecture, the 30 metre-high Vitra Slide Tower features an open staircase for ascending and a twisting, 38 metre-long covered slide for descending. A steel tripod supports […]

]]>Artist Carsten Höller has erected a cross between a viewing tower and a helter skelter at the Vitra Campus at Weil am Rhein in Germany (+ slideshow).

Part artwork and part architecture, the 30 metre-high Vitra Slide Tower features an open staircase for ascending and a twisting, 38 metre-long covered slide for descending. A steel tripod supports a circular viewing platform that is 17 metres about the ground and is surmounted by a numberless, illuminated clock with a face that measures six metres in diameter.

"With its prominent clock at the top, it is not a building in the classical sense but a viewing tower with a slide," said Vitra, "and a work of art that enables a new and unique experience of self and art."

German artist Höller has created slide artworks before, notably his 2006 Test Site installation at Tate Modern in London, which featured five temporary slides that linked the museum's fifth level to the floor of the Turbine Hall.

Höller also built a slide for fashion mogul Miucccia Prada, connecting her Milan office directly to the car park outside.

The Vitra Slide Tower is the latest landmark structure at the Vitra Campus, which is the production base of furniture brand Vitra and which features buildings by architects including Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron and Frank Gehry.

The campus is undergoing major development and reorganisation, with the seminal Fire Station designed by Zaha Hadid now more accessible to the public thanks to a new landscaped path by Álvaro Siza linking it to the Herzog & de Meuron-designed VitraHaus showroom.

"Höller’s Vitra Slide Tower underscores the routing of the new pathway while simultaneously operating as a fully independent element," said Vitra.

"Vitra’s goal was to develop a work with an artist that would fit into the overall plan for the campus and be able to hold its own in face of the powerful architecture on the campus without being closed off and self-contained, offering visitors an enriching and inspiring experience whether or not they have a special affinity for art."

"As a design company leader you are a romantic person because you believe you can do things for the world through design, which to an outsider sounds completely ridiculous," he said. "But we believe it."

]]>http://www.dezeen.com/2014/06/20/carsten-holler-builds-a-tower-with-a-slide-to-the-vitra-campus/feed/0Flying City Tableware by Carsten Höller for Nymphenburghttp://www.dezeen.com/2010/08/04/flying-city-tableware-by-carsten-holler-for-nymphenburg/
http://www.dezeen.com/2010/08/04/flying-city-tableware-by-carsten-holler-for-nymphenburg/#commentsWed, 04 Aug 2010 16:53:30 +0000http://www.dezeen.com/?p=90280Belgian artist Carsten Höller has created a set of tableware for Porcelain manufacturer Nymphenburg, depicting the iconic Flying City project by the late Russian architect Georgy Krutikov. Called Flying City Tableware, the collection also features the design from 19th Century invention the Benham Top, a spinning top painted in a black and white design that causes […]

Belgian artist Carsten Höller has created a set of tableware for Porcelain manufacturer Nymphenburg, depicting the iconic Flying City project by the late Russian architect Georgy Krutikov.

Called Flying City Tableware, the collection also features the design from 19th Century invention the Benham Top, a spinning top painted in a black and white design that causes the viewer to perceive colours while it's spinning.

The collection is on display in Rotterdam as part of a mechanical installation that turns the plates.

The collection comprises three plates, a tea cup and saucer.

Here's some more information from Nymphenburg:

FLYING CITY TABLEWARE

Carsten Höller for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg

Artist Carsten Höller has devised an edition for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg. He has established the starting point for a series of editions that will continue in the near future, with artists such as Tobias Rehberger, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and Joep van Lieshout.

At the core of his work, which Carsten Höller has presented hitherto at the Tate Modern, London, at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, and in the Guggenheim Museum, New York, amongst others, is the perpetual question of the conventions that govern the way we lead our lives and whether indeed it is possible to imagine things in a fundamentally different way. In developing the FLYING CITY TABLEWARE (2010) for the Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, Carsten Höller has devised an edition that takes up this theme in a new way.

The tableware comprises a combination of a service plate, a dinner plate, a side plate, and a teacup and saucer, each decorated with a design relating to two fundamentally different sources: on the one hand, Georgy Krutikov's design for a FLYING CITY (1928) and, on the other, the rotating Benham top or disc (1894-95), eponymously named after its inventor, Charles Benham. Höller chose Wolfgang von Wersin's LOTOS Service (1932) upon which to present the motif - tableware that belongs to the classical Nymphenburg services of the New Sobriety and reflects, in its elegant simplicity, the functional aesthetics of the avant-garde period.

Carsten Höller has already used both motifs in earlier works: the Benhamesque stripes in MASONWHEEL (2001) and latterly Krutikow's visualworlds in THE DOUBLE CLUB (2008-09) in London. He brings bothmotifs together for the first time in the FLYING CITY TABLE WARE.

The FLYING CITY TABLEWARE is produced in two different versions. The wall installation - a unique specimen that Höller will be presenting until 25 April 2010 in Rotterdam - comprises eight hand-painted plates, each mounted on a rotating mechanism and connected to one another by a leather transmission belt. The plates can be rotated at a maximum of 600 revolutions per minute, by means of a manual crank. From about 300 revolutions, the effect discovered by Benham, whereby the black and white graphic design is perceived in colour, starts to emerge. In the installation, the dynamisation inherent in the motifs is achieved through actual mechanical motion.

At the same time, the tableware is intended for use: service plate, dinner plate, side plate, and teacup and saucer are also available in a limited edition of twenty five signed services, each designed for two people. A table centrifuge for the rotation of the Benhamesque plates also forms part of this edition.